I want to give readonly access to my public folders. Anyone can delete or modify the files which I am sharing here for my TV and other network devices. If I create a user and make a restricted folder, then it is very difficult to login with my TV and mobile devices to access this share.
Hope that the next firmware update will at least have some type of fix for this issue.
Officially you cannot restrict access to the default Public Share folder nor can it be officially set to Private like other Shares. This has been a common complaint for years. What you can do is turn off Media Serving on the Public Share to prevent DLNA clients from being able to access media content in that Share. One could put thier media in Shares OTHER than the Public Share then restrict access to those Shares by setting them to Private and limiting who has either Full Access or Read Access to the Private Share. Because of the way DLNA works it can still access a Share even though its set to Private provided the Media Serving option is enabled for that Private Share.
Unofficially there are way to try and deal with this issue, but it involves modifying one or more firmware files using SSH.
It is really very strange for me that this has been a common complaint for
years but WD still not taking any corrective action officially ? I don
think that it is a difficult task for your firmware developers to put a
“READ ONLY = YES/NO” switch followed by PUBLIC ACCESS = YES/NO switch.
I know that there is a way to do this using SSH but I do not want to tweak
my WD device unofficially.
So I hope that WD people will take care of this complaint before releasing
the next firmware.
@Azhar_Mahmood, chances are slim that WD will address this long standing issue any time soon if at all. Supposedly part of the reason why one cannot, within the Dashboard, set the Public Share to Private has to do with the Twonky Media Server. Which I believe uses the Public Share when it aggregates content from other media servers.
If one is using pre OS 3 firmware there was a hack that would allow one to set the Public Share but it ONLY works on pre OS 3 firmware:
Bennor doesn’t work for WD, so they’re not his developers.
Almost no-one on this forum works for WD; it’s a user-to-user forum.
If you want to add your voice to the requests to add the ability to restrict access to the Public share, then vote/post on the first link Bennor posted (in ‘Cloud Ideas’).
Reference to below, look what a professional reply from WD support. Instead of making any improvement in this, they are asking me to purchase other device.
As much as we may not like WD’s reply, they are right. The device for all its flaws (and poor programming) is what it is, people’s expectations (sometime unreasonable) are what they are. The device doesn’t officially have the capability to disable or turn off the Public Share. If that is a problem then either; go the unofficial route mentioned above, live with it and don’t put anything in the Public Share directory, or as WD suggests find another NAS device that meets your expectations.
The sad fact is there are several issues that WD should address but; has not, will not, and probably never will address. These includes, beyond the Public Share issue, the remote mapping feature and Windows Phone app that were both removed when WD went to OS 3 firmware. There is now a workaround for the remote mapping issue (see link below) but so far no good workaround to the lack of a WD app for Windows Phone users.